Lough Gill

Lough Gill is about eight kilometres long, lying between Sligo town and the Leitrim border, with wooded shores and around twenty islands. The best known is Innisfree, a small uninhabited island near the southern shore, which W B Yeats wrote about in The Lake Isle of Innisfree - a poem composed in London out of homesickness, describing a cabin he never built on an island he did not own. It is visible from a signposted viewpoint on the southern road and from the lake boats. Parke's Castle on the Leitrim shore is a restored seventeenth-century fortified manor built by an English planter on the site of an earlier O'Rourke tower, open to visitors and the departure point for cruises. Slish Wood on the southern shore and the Dooney Rock trails on the north-western end give woodland walks, both also named in Yeats poems.

History

The name means "bright or white lake". In the early historic era, the 5th to 8th centuries, the area was home to a branch of the Cálraighe, and Parke's Castle on the northern shore was built in the early 17th century by Captain Robert Parke on the site of a tower house of the Uí Ruairc (Wikipedia, Lough Gill).

The landscape

• Innisfree - the small island of the poem, seen from the shore or a boat.
• Parke's Castle - a restored seventeenth-century manor on the Leitrim side.
• The wooded shores - Slish Wood and Dooney Rock, both with trails.
• The islands - around twenty scattered across the lake.

When to go

April to October, when boat trips run and the woodland walks are at their best. Autumn colour on the shores is the strongest reason to come late in the season.

Things to know

You cannot land on Innisfree - it is seen from a distance, which disappoints people expecting more. Boat trips are seasonal and weather-dependent. The shore roads are narrow with limited parking at the viewpoints.

Nearby

Sligo town is west; Glencar and Parke's Castle are on the Leitrim side.

Key facts